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Page 38
The ambulances were now arriving fast from the field dressing-stations
close to the line, and we hurried away, and were soon driving through
Poperinghe. Here and there there was a house wrecked with shell-fire. The
little town indeed with its picturesque _place_ is constantly shelled.
But, all the same, life seems to go on as usual. The Poperinghe boy, like
his London brother, hangs on the back of carts; his father and mother
come to their door to watch what is going on, or to ask eagerly for news
of the counter-attack; and his little brothers and sisters go tripping to
school, in short cloaks with the hoods drawn over their heads, as though
no war existed. Here and in the country round, poor robbed Belgium is
still at home on her own soil, and on the best of terms with the English
Army, by which, indeed, this remnant of her prospers greatly. As I have
already insisted, the relations everywhere between the British soldier and
the French and Belgian populations are among the British--or shall I say
the Allied?--triumphs of the war.
Farther on the road a company from a famous regiment, picked men all of
them, comes swinging along, fresh from their baths!--life and force in
every movement--young Harrys with their beavers on. Then, a house where
men have their gas-helmets tested--a very strict and necessary business;
and another, where an ex-Balliol tutor and Army Chaplain keeps open doors
for the soldier in his hours of rest or amusement. But we go in search of
a safe road to a neighbouring village, where some fresh passes have to be
got. Each foot now of the way is crowded with the incidents and
appurtenances of war, and war close at hand. An Australian transport base
is pointed out, with a wholly Australian staff. "Some of the men," says
our guide, "are millionaires." Close by is an aeroplane descending
unexpectedly in a field, and a crowd of men rushing to help; and we turn
away relieved to see the two aviators walking off unhurt. Meanwhile, I
notice a regular game of football going on at a distance, and some
carefully written names of bypaths--"Hyde Park Corner," "Piccadilly,"
"Queen Mary's Road," and the like. The animation, the life of the scene
are indescribable.
At the next village the road was crowded both with natives and soldiers to
see the German prisoners brought in. Alack! we did not see them.
Ambulances were passing and re-passing, the slightly wounded men in cars
open at the back, the more serious cases in closed cars, and everywhere
the same _va et vient_ of lorries and wagons, of staff-cars and
motor-cyclists. It was not right for us to add to the congestion in the
road. Moreover, the hours were drawing on, and the great sight was still
to come. But to have watched those prisoners come in would have somehow
rounded off the day!
IV
Our new passes took us to the top of a hill well known to the few
onlookers of which this war admits. The motor stopped at a point on the
road where a picket was stationed, who examined our papers. Then came a
stiff and muddy climb, past a dugout for protection in case of shelling,
Captain ---- carrying the three gas-helmets. At the top was a flat green
space--three or four soldiers playing football on it!--and an old
windmill, and farm-buildings.
We sheltered behind the great beams supporting the windmill, and looked
out through them, north and east, over a wide landscape; a plain bordered
eastward by low hills, every mile of it, almost, watered by British blood,
and consecrate to British dead. As we reached the windmill, as though in
sombre greeting, the floating mists on the near horizon seemed to part,
and there rose from them a dark, jagged tower, one side of it torn away.
It was the tower of Ypres--mute victim!--mute witness to a crime, that,
beyond the reparations of our own day, history will avenge through years
to come.
A flash!--another!--from what appear to be the ruins at its base. It is
the English guns speaking from the lines between us and Ypres; and as we
watch we see the columns of white smoke rising from the German lines as
the shells burst. There they are, the German lines--along the Messines
ridge. We make them out quite clearly, thanks to a glass and Captain
----'s guidance. Their guns, too, are at work, and a couple of their
shells are bursting on our trenches somewhere between Vlamertinghe and
Dickebusche. Then the rattle of our machine-guns--as it seems from
somewhere close below us, and again the boom of the artillery.
The counter-action is in progress, and we watch what can be seen or
guessed of it, in fascination. We are too far off to see what is actually
happening between the opposing trenches, but one of the chief fields of
past and present battle, scenes which our children and our children's
children will go to visit, lie spread out before us. Half the famous sites
of the earlier war can be dimly made out between us and Ypres. In front of
us is the gleam of the Zillebeke Lake, beyond it Hooge. Hill 60 is in that
band of shadow; a little farther east the point where the Prussian Guard
was mown down at the close of the first Battle of Ypres; farther south the
fields and woods made for ever famous by the charge of the Household
Cavalry, by the deeds of the Worcesters, and the London Scottish, by all
the splendid valour of that "thin red line," French and English, cavalry
and infantry, which in the first Battle of Ypres withstood an enemy four
times as strong, saved France, and thereby England, and thereby Europe. In
that tract of ground over which we are looking lie more than 100,000
graves, English and French; and to it the hearts of two great nations will
turn for all time. Then if you try to pierce the northern haze, beyond
that ruined tower, you may follow in imagination the course of the Yser
westward to that Belgian coast where Admiral Hood's guns broke down and
scattered the German march upon Dunkirk and Calais; or if you turn south
you are looking over the Belfry of Bailleul, towards Neuve Chapelle, and
Festubert, and all the fierce fighting-ground round Souchez and the
Labyrinth. Once English and French stood linked here in a common heroic
defence. Now the English hold all this line firmly from the sea to the
Somme; while the French, with the eyes of the world upon them, are making
history, hour by hour, at Verdun.
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